When We Kiss (2 page)

She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse and pressed her hands against her cheeks, hoping she didn't look as worked up as Liam did. She likely did, but it was warm in the main rooms where the reception was going on, and she could blame it on the heat.

“When you get bored with him, call me,” Liam said as she walked past him.

She was surprised he was letting her go so easily, but she heard the arrogance in his tone and caught the smug set of his mouth. She paused at the door and turned. He'd also pivoted.

Pulling her lips into a saccharine smile she hoped gave him a toothache, she said, “Even if I
do
get bored, I will
not
call you. We're done. And next time you try something like that, I will use every bit of kickboxing I've ever learned and beat you into the floor.”

She opened the door and shut it loudly behind herself. Feeling moderately better but still frustratingly and inconveniently aroused, she started along the hallway back toward the reception.

And ran straight into Liam's mother, Emily Archer.

She smiled. “Aubrey, I don't suppose you've seen Liam, have you?”

Caught red-handed. She forced a tight smile. “No, I haven't. I was just using the restroom.” She wanted to make it clear she hadn't been in the sitting room with Liam, just in case Emily found him in there. “Sorry.”

“It's all right. It's time to make the toasts, and since he's the best man, we need him.”

Aubrey was still a bit surprised that Evan had chosen Liam for the role, especially when he had several other candidates, from his brother Kyle to his adoptive brother, Derek, to his sister's fiancée, Dylan, to his brother-in-law, Sean. Any of them would have been a far more obvious choice. Since their brother's suicide, Liam was the lone holdout to supporting Alex's legacy.

Alex had left his six siblings and adoptive brother a monastery for them to renovate and operate as a premier hotel and restaurant, the crown jewel in their family's chain of popular brewpubs. One by one, they'd each accepted the role Alex had set out for them. Everyone except Liam. His younger brother, Hayden, didn't count. He'd initially taken a major part in the project until his lifelong dream of making wine in France had come to fruition last year.

Hayden had a very good reason for leaving, while Liam had nothing but selfish arrogance keeping him away.

Aubrey wanted to get out of the hallway before Liam emerged from the sitting room. She'd had quite enough of him for one day.

Yes, keep telling yourself that. Keep reminding yourself that he hasn't shown the slightest interest in anything more permanent than getting together for sex and a good time. Sure, you laugh together and share some things in common, but every moment you spent with him was temporary. Fleeting. Do whatever you have to in order to keep him from settling into your heart.

L
IAM STOOD NEAR
the massive fireplace in his parents' great room and watched Aubrey laugh with her date. Stuart the Accountant was tall, broad-shouldered, and bearded. Truth be told, he looked more like a lumberjack than an accountant. And he was completely entranced by Aubrey. But who wouldn't be? She was stunning.

Her brows were perfectly crafted to draw attention to her sultry hazel eyes, and she wore just enough makeup to accentuate the elegant line of her cheekbones and the suppleness of her lips. Her red hair was twisted up, baring her long and graceful neck. She wore a dark green fitted dress and black heels. She was sleek and sexy, but he knew that as great as she looked dressed, she looked even better undressed.

Scowling, he turned away and strode into the kitchen to refill his beer at the tap. He found his brother Kyle and his brother-in-law, Sean, doing the same.

“Hey,” Kyle said. “Need a refill? Sean's doing duty.”

Liam walked around the bar to where Kyle was standing opposite Sean, who was behind the tap. “Beer me.” He slid his empty pint glass emblazoned with both the Archer logo and Evan's and Alaina's names and the date of their marriage across the bar to Sean. Guests would take home a pint glass and a growler of special-edition beer Dad had just managed to brew in time. This had been a relatively quickie wedding, since Alaina was pregnant.

“Hard to believe so many of us are married or getting married.” Kyle shook his head with a bemused smile.

“Including you,” Liam said. “I can't believe you're monogomizing, let alone getting married.”

“Monogomizing?” Sean asked, his British accent giving the made-up word gravitas. He handed Liam his refilled glass.

Liam took the beer and brought it to his mouth. “What else would you call it?” He sipped the IPA. “Before Maggie, Kyle didn't do girlfriends.”

Sean sipped his beer. “You don't really either, from what I can tell.”

“Oh, Liam does girlfriends—for three to six months maybe,” Kyle said. “But damn, brother, seems like you've had a drought the past year or so. Unless you've been keeping someone secret.”

Liam nearly choked on his next drink of beer. Aubrey might be a secret, but he couldn't call her a girlfriend. And if she was to be believed about their
thing
being over, she wasn't even a secret anymore. She wasn't anything except the attorney administering their brother's trust and handling this stupid zoning appeal for the property.

And why hadn't she been one of his girlfriends? She met every single one of his requirements and then some.

Duh, because she lived in Ribbon Ridge, and he lived in Denver. It was hard to have a relationship, even the casual ones he preferred, long-distance. A voice deep in his head said it was the
and then some
that was the problem. Aubrey was unlike any woman he'd ever known. Aside from being crazy attracted to her, he liked spending time with her. And that wasn't good for a guy who preferred to keep things unfettered. He liked to be in total control, and sharing your life with someone meant sharing control.
Pass.

Kyle pulled a stool out from the bar and sat down. “Looking back, it seems like you went dormant after Alex died. You never talk about him, about what happened. You okay?”

He flashed Kyle a smug smile. “King of the world, man.” Liam knew Kyle was genuinely asking about him, but he didn't want to go there right now. If he ever did. Instead, he defaulted to flipping him shit, which was their norm. They'd been particularly competitive in their youth, with sports and girls and popularity. Kyle had struggled academically, washing out of college in the first year and then going on to culinary school, where he'd found his niche. He'd become a rock-star chef until his gambling addiction had completely derailed him and driven him to Florida for several years.

Liam had felt like he'd won, but that was stupid. And looking at Kyle now, it seemed that he was the winner—happily engaged with a five-star restaurant set to open. Provided Aubrey could make this zoning problem go away.

Damn, Alex's entire project—his dream—hung in the balance because of some asshole who didn't want a commercial property adjoining his acreage. An acreage on which Liam was pretty sure sat an empty shed, a creek, and not much else. “Who's behind the appeal again? I forgot.”

If he'd ever known. He'd kept himself out of pretty much everything to do with The Alex—they'd even named the hotel after their brother, a decision Liam had also had nothing to do with. Just what they needed, another reminder of the brother who'd cut a hole in each of them by selfishly ending his life.

“Russ Parker,” Kyle said. “Do you know the story there?”

Holy fuck.
Liam would've remembered that name. And yes, he goddamn well knew the story, but he sure as hell wouldn't say so to Kyle or anyone else in his meddling family. Wait . . . If Kyle knew the story, he would've called Liam months ago and yelled at him to fix it. So whatever story Kyle was referencing couldn't be what Liam knew . . .

“What?” Liam asked cautiously.

“Parker used to date Mom in college. She dumped him to go out with Dad. He's hated Dad ever since.”

Son of a bitch.
Not many things rendered Liam speechless, but for a moment he simply couldn't form words. This was a total clusterfuck. If he'd known about that, he never would've started up with Whitney Parker a couple of years ago. Had she known?

When Liam had heard her father's name a minute ago, he'd assumed
she
was the reason behind the appeal. She'd been pissed when he'd ended things with her eighteen months or so ago. But she'd run her course. Although she'd been a long-distance hook-up, Liam had still grown bored by the six-month mark, prompting him to stop seeing her when he came to town.

He suddenly realized their
thing
had been similar to what he'd done with Aubrey last year. Except with Whitney, she'd done all the initiating, while with Aubrey, it had been more mutual. The other exception was that Liam had tired of Whitney, but he still couldn't get enough of Aubrey. And it wasn't just her body, because Whitney could've fulfilled that need at any time. With Aubrey it had been something more, something he couldn't define and didn't want to.

Hell, there was no point thinking about that right now. Or ever really. A vision of her laughing with her lame-ass date rose in his mind, and he shoved it all away. He looked from Kyle to Sean, who'd secretly married their sister Tori in Vegas on the eve of their brother's suicide, much to Tori's absolute devastation. She'd spent most of last year pushing everyone away, including her secret husband, but they'd found their way back to each other last fall. They had settled into Ribbon Ridge like an old married couple—her with a burgeoning architecture firm and Sean with his production company, which he co-owned with Evan's new wife, the spectacularly famous actress Alaina Pierce.

“What, no response?” Kyle asked, narrowing his eyes. “What's up with you, Liam?”

“Nothing.” He pulled himself back to the conversation about Parker. “That's effed up. Glad to know our business matters are someone else's revenge trip.”

Kyle paused in lifting his glass to drink. “ ‘Our' business matters? You just mean Archer business, since
you
don't really have anything to do with them, right?”

Liam got the dig, and he deserved it. Immediately following Alex's suicide, he hadn't been the only one who'd refused to come home, but the others who had—Kyle and Evan—had both returned since then and had done so in spades. Kyle had exceeded everyone's expectations, taking over for Hayden as COO at Archer when Hayden had accepted the wine-making internship in France and jumping into The Alex project like he'd been there from the start. He'd even found a top-notch landscape architect and groundskeeper in his fiancée, Maggie. Meanwhile, Evan had taken over Alex's old job at Archer as creative director, plus he was managing the creative aspects for The Alex. Everyone had a hand in the family business. Everyone but Liam.

Not that he cared—he had his own real-estate development company in Denver. He'd taken over the true family business that their forefathers had started when they'd founded Ribbon Ridge. The Archers owned half the town, and Liam had inherited his great-grandfather's head for development and business. So Dad had repeatedly told him. Liam could've easily stepped into that role at Archer, freeing Dad up to focus more on his true love: crafting beer. But Liam hadn't wanted a hand-me-down. He'd wanted to build something from nothing. And he'd wanted to do it nice and far away from Ribbon Ridge.

More accurately, he'd wanted to do it nice and far away from his family.

Oh, come on, asshole, you can at least be honest with yourself—you wanted to be far away from Alex.

He gulped down half his beer. “Nope, none of it has anything to do with me. You're right about that,” he said at last.

“Why is that?” Sean asked, leaning on the counter and looking at Liam. “How come you're the only one who stays away?”

Because I was a constant reminder to my twin of what he could never be.

But now that twin was gone. Why
couldn't
he come home? Ugh, too much shit to think about when all he wanted was a really good buzz. And since jumping out of an airplane wasn't going to happen at eight o'clock on a Saturday night, he'd have to settle for more beer. Or maybe something stronger. Hell, maybe he should blow out of here altogether.

Yes, run upstairs and change his clothes, then sneak out the back to the garage, where he kept a bike for when he was in town. A nice night ride—the weather was perfect—would give him enough of a buzz to release some of his pent-up frustration. Or pent-up lust, more like it. Wind whipping through his hair, bike beneath him devouring the road at sixty miles an hour. Sounded like heaven.

As close to heaven as he was going to get tonight, since Aubrey seemed intent on dogging him.
Fine.
He didn't need her. He didn't need anybody. Hadn't he established that over the past six years?

Kyle clapped him on the shoulder. “Dude, are you even here tonight?”

“For a little while longer.” Liam drank the rest of his beer and set it back down. “Another one, Sean.” Not if he wanted to ride. “On second thought, never mind.” He looked at Sean and answered his question. “I don't come back here permanently because, let's face it, no one really wants me to. I don't fit here anymore, and that's fine by me. I come back four, five times a year. I think everyone sees me just enough to remember why they prefer I live somewhere else.” He slid Kyle a glance. “Right, bro?”

“Nailed it.” The snarky response was expected and made Liam grin, but there was something behind Kyle's eyes that made him uncomfortable. Something that Liam hoped Kyle would keep to his damn self.

“See you guys later,” Liam said, turning from the counter and intending to steal up the back stairs to his childhood bedroom, where he stayed when he was in Ribbon Ridge.